"Yuki!"

Natsuki knelt by my side and carefully sat me up. "Yuki, are you alright? Did you get hurt anywhere?"

"I'm fine," I responded. "Just a scratch."

She examined my limbs, looking for evidence of a wound, but found nothing.

"Sorry, if only my instructions had been a bit clearer..."

"No, I was the one who forgot to think about how the sword should stop..."

"If you've figured it out, then let's try it one more time, alright?"

Natsuki smiled and helped me stand up. I picked up my sword and raised it over my head again. I let my mana flow once more into the sword's tip, and Natsuki nodded.

"Not a circle this time, but an arc. An arc has a start and an end. You can do it, Yuki."

I let my sword fall, and it fell with the speed of lightning. It fell not like the lightning that falls to the earth and crashes into the trees, but like the lightning that leaps from one cloud to another, starting and stopping so suddenly it defies inertia.

"Good work, Yuki!" Natsuki clapped quietly. "Professor, what's next?"

"...Oh, next." Agnia picked up one of the documents she had already completed, and looked back and forth between it and the one she was working on. "Next, do the thing with the tip of the sword, but in addition, the blade... put some mana on the blade too."

"The blade! That's right!" Natsuki clapped loudly, once. "If you coat the edge of the blade in mana, it'll get sharper, and you'll be able to cut through that stupid wolf too!"

That's right. I couldn't cut that wolf's hide with my sword, and because I couldn't, I can't become a proper adventurer. But if I have a technique like this, I can cut it! And if I can cut that wolf, I can become strong, and I can really support Natsuki on our journey! I can stand by her side, with pride!

I brought my sword over my head, and first pushed about half the mana in my hands to the tip of the sword. I coated the sword with the other half, focusing it only on the edge of the edge of the blade.

I swung the sword, and—

schwish—

The air itself parted before the blade.

The greatest obstacle to moving at high speeds is air resistance. When you move twice as fast, air resistance slows you down four times as much. But the air did not resist my sword.

Then I shall name this technique "Peregrine", after the bird which flies upon the air but as though through a vacuum. With this, I can cut through that wolf. I know it.

Agnia still didn't look up. "That's the correct technique, probably. I don't think I can teach you any more than this, so—"

"So, Yuki, let's do some drills!" Natsuki clapped my shoulders. "Repeat that a hundred times. But every time your mana leaks, I'm adding three. Okay? Professor, you can just do your paperwork for now."

"If you say so," Agnia murmured.

"Wait... Natsuki... doing that a hundred times, I can't do that..."

"You can't know that until you try! I'll be cheering you on, okay? Do your best! One!"

Natsuki stepped to the side, and I reluctantly swung my sword.

"Two!"

In rhythm with her shout, I swung my sword.

"Your mana leaked from the sword's tip! Negative one!"

I swung my sword.

"Good! Zero!"

---

After some time, and a handful of misses, and a lot of encouragement from Natsuki, I made it to the end.

"That's one hundred. Good job, Yuki. Why don't you take a short rest? Come here."

Natsuki spread her arms wide. I, of course, dropped my sword and jumped into her arms. Holding me tight, she craned her head down and whispered sweet praises in my ear.

"I told you you could do it. Have more confidence, Yuki. You're really smart, you know."

"I could only do it because... you were encouraging me..."

"But I'll always be there to encourage you, so you don't need to worry about that." She gave me a little squeeze.

Agnia aligned her papers and slapped them down on the bench. She curved her back and stretched her arms, sighing loudly. "Pretty shameless thing to be doing out in public, don't you think?"

"Shameless?" My eyes opened wide. "Is this... shameless?"

"Love is never something to be ashamed of, Yuki. The professor is just jealous." Natsuki smiled reassuringly at me, but I couldn't help but feel a little bit doubtful. Agnia is from the Capital, so she would know more about these kinds of things...

"Well, whatever." Agnia shrugged, and pulled some kind of fancy-looking device from her coat. "Natsuki, today—"

Natsuki rushed over to the bench and peered at the device. "What's this? Binoculars? What does it do?"

Agnia was taken aback for a moment. "...It is a spectrometer. It can analyze the component trigrams of mana. I also have this..." She pulled out another device. "This is an oscilloscope. It can analyze the waveform of mana. Today, I want to take a look at the timbre of your trigrams. So, fire all the magic you know directly at me, one at a time. Of course, I'll provide you advice as required."

Natsuki poked at the hunks of metal. "Isn't that dangerous? What if these precious, precious devices break?"

...Normally, in this situation you're supposed to ask 'what if you get hurt?', right?

"I am, as it turns out, quite experienced in the magic of Flow Redirection, which means that as long as you do not explicitly try to kill me, it is impossible for you to hurt me or these tools."

"Flow Redirection?!" Natsuki grinned even wider. "Flow Redirection is the one where you get hit by a lightning bolt in one hand and shoot it out the other hand, right?"

"Yes, but it only works for magic lightning, not real lightning." Anticipating what Natsuki would say next, Agnia preempted it. "And no, I won't teach you it, not until your mana control improves."

"Fine. Then I'll just have to get better really fast." Natsuki walked back over to me and clasped my hands in hers. "Yuki, watch closely, alright?"

I sat down on another bench, and watched Natsuki fire off spell after spell, directly into the binoculars-like tools Agnia held in front of her face. Natsuki's mana control has gotten a lot better... but I can still see it flowing off in the wrong direction a little bit every now and then.